Soon after this tragedy, his father faced new legal challenges. On March 16, 1951, the government leveled fresh charges of income tax evasion against him. Since he had already been convicted of that offense, the indictment posed an especially serious threat. Ralph’s lawyers attempted to arrive at a compromise, but the Internal Revenue Service refused even to discuss the matter. Ralph Capone owed $96,679 income tax, said the IRS. They claimed to have twenty-five agents continuing to work on Ralph’s case, and they were bound to come up with still more evidence of income tax evasion. Ralph was now fifty-seven years old, and it appeared that he was destined to spend the rest of his days trapped in the coils of the tax code.
• • •
The intensive IRS investigation of Ralph Capone yielded one surprising result. The agents examining his finances followed a strange trail leading from his retreat in Mercer, Wisconsin, all the way to Homer, Nebraska, and a man known as “Two-Gun” Hart. Ralph was no smarter now than he had been twenty years earlier, when the government first began investigating him, and in a move that Al Capone, had he been alive to see it, would surely have prevented, Ralph listed their “lost” brother, “Two-Gun” Hart, as the title holder of Recap Lodge, Ralph’s primary place of business in Mercer. Since Hart had rejoined the Capone family by this time, although keeping his assumed name, federal agents made short work of establishing his true identity. In September 1951, a grand jury in Chicago heard the startling news that the “Two-Gun” Hart who held title to the Recap Lodge was actually Ralph’s brother—and the brother of Al Capone. By now the reputation of “Two-Gun” Hart, once the most feared and violent Prohibition agent west of the Mississippi, had faded into distant memory, but Al Capone remained fresh in the mind of the public, and any brother of his was newsworthy, especially one who had once been a lawman himself. After decades of obscurity, Hart burst into the headlines again, not for rounding up bootlegging suspects or drunken Indians, but for playing a minor role in the Capone family’s finances. It seemed to him as though the invisible hand was at work again. First it had led him back to his family, and now it prodded him to shed the disguise he had worn since his youth and to reveal his true identity to the U.S. government.
Served with a subpoena to appear before the grand jury investigating Ralph Capone’s tax problems, Hart and his wife journeyed by train from Homer to Union Station in Chicago, where reporters caught up with him. The man who appeared before them bore only a faint resemblance to “Two-Gun” Hart in his prime. Suffering from diabetes, he had become obese, and he walked slowly and hesitantly, with the aid of a cane. He was balding, and he wore glasses, but even with them his eyesight was severely impaired. He looked nothing like the man who had once tracked Indians for days across the wilderness, nor did he resemble a gangster. He appeared, instead, to be a retired civil servant, which was what he was. The following day, Hart spent five hours before the grand jury, reminding them of his unusual life story, his reasons for changing his name, and his memorable exploits as a marshal and Prohibition agent. As for his ties to Ralph Capone, all he would say was that they were brothers.
As soon as he finished testifying, he and his wife left Chicago and returned to the wrinkle in the prairie that had been his home for many years. He died in Homer of a heart attack on October 1, 1952, at the age of sixty. Because of the recent publicity he had received, his passing was widely noted. Although the ruse he had sustained throughout his adult life had finally been exposed, the newspapers sympathized with his efforts to distance himself from his family. “The very name Capone recalls an era,” the Lincoln (Nebraska) Star editorialized. “Al rose to the head of a crime empire that owned official Chicago and ruled the underworld throughout America. . . . Now comes to light that there was another Capone, a brother named James. Ashamed of his four gangster brothers, James went to Nebraska and became a law enforcement officer. He called himself Harte [sic] and was so stern that lawbreakers called him Two-gun’ Harte. He was so fine a man that he was named district commissioner of the Boy Scouts of America. Let no man bemoan his handicaps. A Capone became a leader for good in his community!” Although newspaper editorials sought to differentiate Hart from the other Capones, he had more in common with his brothers than their sermonizing suggested. Throughout his life, in so many ways, he had been Al Capone’s hidden doppelgànger, bringing many of the same tactics to law enforcement that Al brought to the rackets.
As death depleted the ranks of the Capone family, Ralph soldiered on. Spending most of time in Mercer, Wisconsin, he dealt at arm’s length with the IRS throughout the fifties. The interest and penalties on the taxes more than doubled the amount he owed, but in the end he paid up and retained his freedom, as well as a measure of privacy.
The same could not be said of Al’s only child, Sonny, who drifted along in Miami. He avoided the temptation to enter the rackets, where his name alone would have guaranteed him a position, largely to honor his mother’s wishes. Indeed, at one point a representative of the Chicago Outfit approached him with an offer to play a more active role, but when he told his mother, she would have none of it. “Your father broke my heart,” she told Sonny. “Don’t you do it, too.” In need of money, Sonny opened a restaurant in Miami, where he was often seen in the kitchen, preparing the sauces. The FBI, keeping him under discreet scrutiny, learned that Sonny was not quite as removed from the Outfit as Mae would have wished, for he did receive a modest annual allowance from the boys in Chicago—La Porte, Humphreys, and their colleagues. It was the Outfit’s policy to keep the widows and orphans of its deceased members on a stipend, never a large one, but enough to get along. In return, the Outfit demanded loyalty and silence. Any recipient who started to cooperate with the FBI, for instance, was cut off immediately. The stipend was, in effect, hush money. Yet there was a limit to the Outfit’s generosity. At one point Sonny asked to borrow $24,000 to expand his restaurant, but the Outfit refused his request.
Sonny was stripped of whatever dignity he had left in August 1965, when he was arrested for shoplifting in the Kwik Chek supermarket in North Miami Beach; he was a regular at the store, well known to the management. Nonetheless, he was charged with stealing two bottles of aspirin and a package of flashlight batteries, whose value came to all of $3.50. “Everybody has a little larceny in them,” he said by way of explanation when he was arrested. Since The Untouchables had recently been a hit on television, public awareness of Capone was once again high, and Sonny’s appearance in court before Judge Edward S. Klein to answer the charge of shoplifting generated a flurry of interest. Neatly dressed, balding, looking even older than his forty-five years, Sonny pleaded no contest and received two years’ probation. At the time of this incident, he was in the midst of his second divorce, and his pathetic little venture into the world of crime sounded very much like a cry for help, but help never came, at least not from the world at large. Sonny responded by legally changing his name from Albert Francis Capone to Albert Francis, the name by which he is known today.
As the years passed, death took more members of the Capone family. Ralph died on November 22, 1974, in a rest home near Mercer, Wisconsin, where he had spent his last years. The cause of death was listed as cardiac failure. He was eighty years old. Al’s widow, Mae, lasted until April 16, 1986, when she died at the Hollywood Hills Nursing Home in Florida. She was eighty-nine. Mafalda, the sole Capone sister, died in Michigan on March 25, 1988, at the age of seventy-six. It was said that her tongue remained sharp until the end of her life.
• • •
Harry Hart, Al Capone’s nephew, has spent his entire life in Homer, Nebraska, population 560, where he lives in his father’s house. He is a gentle, softspoken man who resembles his famous uncle only vaguely, mostly around the eyes, which are searching, intense, wary. His accent is as flat as the prairie, his manner soft and considerate. He is a civic leader in that part of the state, playing prominent roles in the Boy Scouts of America and the Lutheran Church.
Not long ago Harry and his wife
Joyce visited a large old home reputed to be Al Capone’s hideout in Wisconsin. The current owners have turned the place into a tourist attraction. As he took the tour, Harry was amused as the guide pointed out the nests and dungeons that Capone and other gangsters supposedly used in their day. Near the end of the tour, another member of the party asked the guide if Al Capone had any descendants. “I heard he had a son or a brother who was a lawyer,” the tourist said, and the guide agreed this was so. Joyce poked her husband in the ribs and encouraged him to speak up and correct the guide, but Harry, in his self-effacing way, preferred to chuckle silently. This was just one more piece of misinformation about Al Capone floating around. He was content in the knowledge that he had come to know and appreciate his uncle. Unlike the crowd of tourists relishing tales of murder and mayhem, he knew who Al Capone really was.
The pool and pool house Capone added to his villa on Palm Island, as they look today. (Author’s collection)
The entrance to Al Capone’s Palm Island villa. (Author’s collection)
Al Capone died in this simple room in his Palm Island villa on January 25, 1947. (Author’s collection)
After his release from Alcatraz, Capone, his mental faculties impaired by neurosyphilis, returned to Palm Island in Miami Beach, Florida, where he spent most of his time in a fog. He is shown here with a trainer. (Historical Association of Southern Florida, Miami News Collection)
An apparently robust Capone in the summer of 1944 at his brother Ralph’s hideout in Mercer, Wisconsin. (Harry H. Hart)
As Al lay dying in his Palm Island villa, his brother Ralph entertained reporters who maintained a vigil with bulletins and, appropriately, bottles of beer. (Historical Association of Southern Florida, Miami News Collection)
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary as it looked during the years Capone was incarcerated there. (San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, Don Devevi Collection)
Three heavily guarded railroad cars bearing Al Capone and other prisoners arrive at Alcatraz in August 1934. (San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, Don Devevi Collection)
Al Capone’s wife, Mae, hiding from reporters who besieged her car after she visited her husband at Alcatraz in 1938. (UPI/Bettmann)
A smiling Al Capone in an immaculate pearl-gray fedora on the way to his trial for income tax evasion. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-97013)
Capone at his trial, flanked by his lawyers, Michael Ahern (left) and Albert Fink (right). (Chicago Historical Society, DN-97061)
Al Capone: Public Enemy Number 1. (Collection of the American Police Center and Museum)
James Colosimo’s popular Chicago nightclub, where young Al Capone served his apprenticeship in vice. (Collection of the American Police Center and Museum)
A novelty shot of Al Capone (left, partly obscured by hat) posing with his brother Albert and Albert’s wife, Dorothy (right), and another couple behind a sign advocating repeal. (Collection of Maxine and Mona Pucci)
Al Capone’s younger brother John—“Mimi” to his family and friends—with his wife, Mary. (Collection of Maxine and Mona Pucci)
A novelty shot of Al’s younger brother Albert (second from right) posing with bodyguards and a girlfriend in front of a mock saloon. (Collection of Maxine and Mona Pucci)
Al Capone’s younger brother Albert, known as “Little Al” in the family, was handsome and popular with women; he chose to live in relatively safe obscurity until his death in 1981. (Collection of Maxine and Mona Pucci)
Albert Anselmi and John Scalise, Al Capone’s most vicious assassins, in 1927. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-82640)
The victims of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, planned by “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn on behalf of Al Capone. (Chicago Historical Society, ICHi-14406)
Capone’s archenemy George “Bugs” Moran, in the leather jacket, at one of his many arraignments. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-93634)
Jack McGurn and his girlfriend, Louise Rolfe, the “blonde alibi,” in court in 1929. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-88600)
Al Capone (left), Dorothy Pucci Capone, and her husband, Albert Capone, in Florida at about the time of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1929). (Collection of Maxine and Mona Pucci)
Al Capone’s primary Chicago residence, 7244 Prairie Avenue, under police surveillance. He lived in this modest dwelling with his wife, mother, son, and an ever-changing cast of brothers and bodyguards. The house still stands today, looking very much as it did here, in 1930. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-91356)
The 1929 funeral of “Hymie” Weiss, another rival gangster whom Capone sent to his grave. This was one of many lavish gangster funerals that dazzled Chicago and appalled the nation during the 1920s. (Collection of the American Police Center and Museum)
The hugely corrupt mayor of Chicago, “Big Bill” Thompson (left), and his rival, William E. “Decent” Dever (right), with their wives. (Chicago Historical Society, ICHi-10024)
Al Capone’s oldest brother, Richard “Two-Gun” Hart (right), posing with stills he captured as a Prohibition agent. (Harry H. Hart)
Hart (left) poses with three Indian chiefs whom he befriended in the course of his duties as a Prohibition agent. (Harry H. Hart)
Ralph “Bottles” Capone (left) lived his life in the shadows of his younger brother Al. Ralph is shown here with Anthony Arresso, another member of the Capone organization. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-D8763)
Johnny Torrio, the inventor of modern racketeering. He was Al Capone’s first—and most important—teacher. (UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos)
Dion O’Banion, florist, bootlegger, gangster, and early rival of Al Capone. (UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos)
Brooklyn’s “Prince of Darkness,” Frankie Yale, Al Capone’s mentor, partner, and, ultimately, victim. (Chicago Historical Society, ICHi-23877)
Jack “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, notorious pimp and accountant to the Capone organization, in a rare photograph. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-8761)
Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti (center) ran the Capone organization during the years Al was in jail. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-93637)
Al Capone (center) with friends and associates during a picnic in Chicago Heights. The dapper Frankie La Porte, the only racketeer from whom Al Capone took orders, is seated at left; Jim Emery, another Capone racketeer active in the Heights, reclines on the grass at right. Emery’s daughter Vera sits between La Porte and Capone, who was her baptismal godfather. (Collection of Jon Binder)
Al Capone’s mother, Teresina Raiola Capone, with one of her many grandchildren. (Collection of Maxine and Mona Pucci)
Ralph Capone’s only child, Ralphie, who later committed suicide after Senate hearings exposed his father to national scrutiny. As a child, Ralphie was almost a second son to Al Capone. (Collection of Maxine and Mona Pucci)
George E. Q. Johnson, the United States Attorney who led the prosecution of Al Capone for income tax evasion. (Collection of George E. Q. Johnson, Jr.)
Frank Wilson, the intrepid IRS agent who investigated the finances of the Capone organization. (Chicago Historical Society, ICHi-23876)
As Cleveland’s director of public safety, Eliot Ness (right) traded on his reputation as the onetime scourge of Al Capone. (Cleveland Press Collection, the Cleveland State University Archives)
Al Capone attends a baseball game in Chicago in 1931, not long before his trial for income tax evasion commenced. The boy sitting beside Capone, often thought to be the racketeer’s son, is a stand-in. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-96S48)
Capone’s soup kitchen, intended to win sympathy for him as the Depression tightened its grip on Chicago. (Chicago Historical Society, DN-93842)
Acknowledgments
I HAVE NEVER BEFORE WRITTEN about someone who differed so sharply from his reputation as Al Capone—with the possible exception of Eliot Ness, that man of many shadows.
When I began work on this book, I received warnings that it might be difficult to conduct research, and initially I encountered m
y fair share of omertà, the code of silence shielding underworld activities. Especially in Chicago—Al Capone’s main arena—people who are in a position to know, but who are now quite respectable, often sought to divert me from the subject of my inquiry. They expressed pride in the city’s Art Institute, the Symphony; why, they asked, did I want to dredge up old stories? As I got beyond such reservations, I came to realize that Al Capone is as much a fact of Chicago life as Lake Michigan.
As my research progressed, I gradually abandoned conventional assumptions of guilt and innocence, right and wrong. Time and again, I found, the good guys behaved like bad guys, and the bad guys behaved like good guys. Capone himself confounded clear-cut definitions of good and evil; surrounded by a hypocritical establishment, he improvised a code of behavior that allowed him to do business in the legitimate sphere as well as the illegitimate. In the process he became a target of anti-Italian prejudice and a scapegoat for the failure of Prohibition. Eventually it became apparent to me that the life of Al Capone was more than the story of a gangster; it is also a story about American society, American culture, and the American legal system—the dark side of the American democratic dream.
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